The King’s New Clothes

1988-89 Topps #120 – Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky 1988-89 Topps Hockey CardWayne Gretzky lucked out on two counts after his trade to the Los Angeles Kings. First off, while Gretzky was sent to the team with arguably the worst uniforms at the time, he never had to wear them. Up until then, the Kings wore those god-awful purple and yellow uniforms. After “The Trade,” the team changed their uniforms to that stylish silver and black getup we all loved in the 1990s. No giant “Imperial Margarine crown” for Wayne.

The other lucky break for The Great One was that he was exempted from the time-honored tradition of the “airbrushed” hockey card. Continue reading “The King’s New Clothes”

NHL Soups satire video

Does anyone remember the “Wayne Gretzky Soup” made by Cambpell’s Soup during the 1996-97 season?

Yeah, seriously, Gretzky was on soup cans towards the end of his career. The picture to the right will prove this.

Anyway, I have one final satirical clip to share from the 1997 NHL Awards, where they featured fake commercials or other humorous skits before and after commercial break. This last one is for more NHL player-inspired brands of soup.

Stew Grimson, anyone?

Miracle on Cardboard

1980 Kellogg’s Olympic Stick’r Trading Cards

1980 US Olympic Team Hockey CardKellogg’s–the makers of cereals such as Corn Flakes–issued a set of smaller-sized, Olympic-themed trading cards. The cards could be peeled away from their cardboard backing and “stuck” to a flat surface-hence calling it a “stick’r trading card”. Released in 1980, these were most likely packed in boxes of cereal. One such card deals with our favorite sport: ice hockey! Here we see some sweet but random hockey action on the front. I’m not sure what teams these are, as the logos have been airbrushed off of the jerseys, but I guess we could assume that the players in white are from Team USA. Adoring the lower left corner of this card is a large and distracting Winter Olympics logo. Continue reading “Miracle on Cardboard”

2008 Blackhawks Convention – Day Three

The Show
Due to a slower-than-usual CTA train, Shellie and I did not arrive at the Blackhawks Convention on Sunday until 9:45 am. The first thing we did was head for the autograph room. I was hoping to get Dustin Byfuglien’s autograph, but he did not show up at his scheduled 9:00 am time. I guess Big Buff and the boys had a hell of a time the night before, as seemed to be the popular story/guess. Continue reading “2008 Blackhawks Convention – Day Three”

Blackhawks Convention – Day One

Today was the first day of the first-ever (and hopefully annual) Chicago Blackhawks Convention. So far, I am having mixed feelings about this event. It has been a lot of fun, but overall it has been very disorganized.

Here is a recap of what I did on the first day of this event. Continue reading “Blackhawks Convention – Day One”

1963-64 Parkhurst #2 – Don Simmons

I have acquired another card from the almighty 1963-64 Parkhurst Hockey Set. This one is of Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Don Simmons.

1963-64 Parkhurst Don SimmonsThis card is in significantly better condition than the Gordie Howe card I purchased to start my set. But this card is not without flaws: it has some light creases, as well as a “dinged” upper-right corner. But for $6, I’m not complaining.

What I find interesting about this card is the “old” Canadian flag–basically a British “Union Jack” with some extra red. Aesthetically, this works well as a backdrop, as the red on this flag offsets the abundance of blue of the Maple Leafs uniform.

Two down, 97 to go…

1992-93 OPC Premier box break


Recently, I went to a card show and picked up a box of 1992-93 O-Pee-Chee Premier hockey cards for $8.

As much as I like old cards and opening packs, this set left me wishing I just bought a complete set online. The problem with that, though, is that many people want to charge you $8 to ship a 132-card set.

So, I thought that I’d buy this box and get a complete set.

I thought wrong. Even though a box would yield you 252 “regular” cards and 36 insert cards, I came surprisingly short of completing a set. Here’s the breakdown of what I got:

Regular cards
– 115 cards towards my set
– 94 doubles
– 42 triples
– 1 quadruple

Insert cards
– 32 “Star Performers” (22 plus 10 doubles)
– 5 “Top Rookies” (4 plus 1 double)

Overall, I now have 88% of a complete set, 100% of the 22-card “Star Performers insert set and 100% of the 4-card “Top Rookies” insert set. Even though it’s cool that I got all the inserts, I really didn’t need them, since I bought those a long time ago.

As you can see, I got a lot of doubles–and quite a few triples too. I even got a quadruple, of Tampa Bay Lightning player Joe Reekie.

Many of the packs had a “packaging flaw”, where you would get two cards of the same player in the same pack. One particular pack gave me three doubles in the same pack, as I pulled two cards of Glen Murray, two cards of Gordie Roberts and two cards of Guy Hebert.

But I ended up with one more insert card than I should have–37 instead of 36…so I guess it wasn’t all bad.

Another interesting tidbit: these cards seemed to “segregate” themselves. In every pack that I pulled a card of Reggie Savage, I also got a card of Darren Banks in the very same pack! I don’t know if the card-packing machines in London, Ontario really intended to put both black players in the same pack, though; it was probably coincidental.

If anyone has doubles and can help me out, I still need 17 cards to complete my set–see my Wantlist here.

I also have numerous doubles to trade of both the base and insert cards, as well as complete insert sets for trade. Reply here, or Contact Me if interested.

Look for a review of this set once I complete it.